1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a battery management system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a battery management system that can be used in a vehicle that is driven by electrical energy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vehicles using an internal combustion engine of gasoline or heavy oil have caused serious air pollution. Accordingly, various efforts for developing electric or hybrid vehicles have recently been made to reduce air pollution.
An electric vehicle uses an electric motor that is operated by electrical energy outputted from a battery. Since the electric vehicle mainly uses a battery formed by one battery pack including a plurality of rechargeable/dischargeable secondary cells, the vehicle has advantages that it has no emission gas and less noise than the vehicle that uses combustion engine.
In the other hand, a hybrid vehicle commonly refers to a gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle that uses an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor to drive the vehicle. Recently, hybrid vehicles using an internal-combustion engine and fuel cells and hybrid vehicles using a battery and fuel cells have been developed. The fuel cells directly obtain electrical energy by generating a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen that are continuously provided to the fuel cells.
In these electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle, performance of a battery directly affects the performance of the vehicle that uses electrical energy, and therefore each cell of the battery is required to have great performance. Also, a battery management system is required to measure a voltage and a current of the battery, and to efficiently manage charging/discharging operations of each battery cell.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.